As technology improves, electronic devices, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pagers, and the like, appear to get smaller and smaller. With this decrease in size almost necessarily comes a decrease in the size of the display screens of those devices. At the same time, another advance in technology has been the use of these display screens as input devices for their corresponding electronic device. As a result, the display screens of many electronic devices are touch sensitive input devices, or touchscreens. However, because the display screens appear to be getting smaller over time, use of the display screen as a touch sensitive input device has become somewhat difficult. This is particularly true where it is intended that an individual use his or her finger to select a selectable item displayed on the touchscreen. As a user places his or her finger on a small item displayed on the touchscreen, the finger will likely occlude the item completely, as well as overlap some of the adjacent items displayed. Consequently, it is often difficult for the user to be certain which item he or she is selecting.
One solution that has been introduced to address this problem is to allow the user to control the electronic device, or applications running thereon, by touching the back of the device. According to this solution, in addition to providing a touchscreen, or similar touch-sensitive input device, on the front (or first side) of the electronic device, the back (or second side) of the device would likewise be able to receive input from the user. Like the touchscreen on the front (or first side) of the device, the input device on the back (or second side) of the electronic device may be touch sensitive. Alternatively, the input device on the back (or second side) of the device may comprise one or more cameras and/or an optical sensor array configured to detect the user's contact with the back of the device.
A need exists for ways in which to use the dual side input devices to manipulate the electronic device and applications running thereon.